Passover/Shabbat HaGadol 2006
In addition to Passover we also celebrate the Shabbat preceding it. In fact this Shabbat has a special name, Shabbat Hagodol, The Great Shabbat.
The Torah writes,
And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron…Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take everyone a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house…And you shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, in which they shall eat it. And they shall eat the meat in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it (Exodus12:1-8).
The Jewish people celebrated the first Passover on the 14th of Nisan the night before leaving Egypt. The Talmud (Shabbat 87b) tells us that the year the Jews left Egypt the 14th of Nisan was a Wednesday and so the 10th of the month, the day on which they took the lamb and set it aside for the Passover offering, was the Shabbat before Passover.
The redemption of course deserves a great celebration, a Seder to reenact the Exodus, but why is the day of the taking of the Passover lamb to prepare it for slaughter and roasting on the Shabbat before so significant? The Midrash tells us that the lamb was no ordinary animal; in Egypt it was a God. The Jews in Egypt we are told were so assimilated into Egyptian society and its beliefs that even the angels almost could not distinguish between them and their captors. Thus, the Jewish taking of this lamb was not only a heroic act of rebellion but a powerful one of separation.
Another cryptic Midrash on God's passing over the houses of the Jewish people reads: “Rabbi Ishmael used to say, surely all is revealed before God...why then does the Torah say, “and I shall see the blood”…this means I will see the blood of the binding of Isaac…”
But why does the Midrash equate the taking of the Passover lamb and the sprinkling of its blood on the doorpost of the Jewish houses with the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham’s child, (though of course he was not actually sacrificed)?
We see the Jews leaving Egypt as having nothing to lose, but in fact theirs was a great sacrificial act. All they knew, the culture they had been woven into for generations, they sacrificed in the moment of taking the lamb, the God of their society, on the 10th of Nisan, on this Shabbat. This Shabbat celebrates the Jews’ revolution and making the ultimate sacrifice of self, that of one’s reality, identity and culture, thereby meriting a true redemption. Shabbat Shalom.
